WIXLIB

I N TR O D U C TI O N/15all God has made, to know that God intentionally made the universein a way that brings him great glory and us great joy.God’s good design when it comes to gender and relationships andsex is for all of these things to work rhythmically together in such a waythat men and women experience the deepest amount of joy possiblewhile at the same time glorifying God at the highest level possible. Thelonging in a single person’s heart for a wife or a husband finds its rootin God’s glory.Wouldn’t it be nice if it still worked the way it did in Genesis?Men, if you got up from a nap and there she was! No games, no confusion, no risk. Just “the one” standing before you, glowing with God’sdelight. Women, can you wrap your minds around a relationship builton clarity and trust, all for your joy and God’s glory? No broken hearts,no mind games, no toying with your emotions. Just serving the Lordwith a man who delights in God all the more because God gave himyou. What a stunning dynamic God’s relational order would create!This is what Adam and Eve enjoyed. Pure, uninhibited, harmonious,glory-filled rapture with each other through pure, uninhibited, harmonious, glory-filled relationship with God.So what happened? Well, Genesis 3 happened. We discover therethat sin entered the world through Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience,fracturing the harmony and disrupting and disgracing the rhythm.Think of a really loud electric guitar that’s not playing correctly in aband. It’s discordant and distracting. You can sort of sense how thesong was meant to be played, but the dissonance is obscuring thebeauty, the harmony. The guitarist might not even know he’s off.Similarly, sometimes we are pursuing God’s good gifts in wayshe has not designed them to be pursued, outside the bounds of theMingling of Souls-INT.indd 1511/13/14 10:54 AM

16/T HE M I N G L I N G OF S OULSglory of his righteousness. We may think we are joining in a beautiful song, but we are actually contributing to the disharmony of thefallen world. A gift that is beautiful, good, perfect, and purposed forour joy instead may begin to harm us (if not kill us) while we try toenjoy the residual good in it.I’ll give you some examples:Wine, which the Scriptures say is from the Lord and for peopleto enjoy, eventually can give way to alcoholism when pursued for itsown sake. Food, which is from the Lord and given to humanity forboth sustenance and enjoyment, becomes gluttony when pursuedself-centeredly. Every good gift God gives us, in fact, becomes an idolwhen we pursue it for its own sake and for our ultimate pleasure andglory. This is true of good gifts, such as family and children and evenchurch. And it is certainly true of gifts designed to facilitate pleasure,such as food and drink and sex. When sin entered the world, what wasmeant to lead people to the worship of God became something withthe potential to harm.Sex is a gift from God. It is meant to nurture intimacy in a marriage and forge a bonding of souls. Unfortunately, sex in our culturehas become almost exclusively a physical thing. We’ve made the wordlove a junk-drawer word. It’s the word that means everything. Peoplewill say they “love” their children but also that they “love” their dogs.Surely they don’t mean the same thing. A husband who “loves” hiswife but also “loves” his favorite NFL team isn’t saying the samething.In the Hebrew lexicon, there are multiple words for love, butone of my favorites is the word dod. Although it is often rendered“love,” dod refers specifically to sexual love and is better translatedMingling of Souls-INT.indd 1611/13/14 10:54 AM

I N TR O D U C TI O N/17as “lovemaking” or “caresses.” It carries the meaning, as Paul Housesaid, of two souls mingling together.7God’s plan is for a man and a woman in the bond of themarriage covenant to have their souls—not just their bodies—become one.Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? A mingling of souls. I want to knowhow we get there, don’t you?The source of that kind of joy and fulfillment is the same sourcefor all sin’s remedy. If we backtrack to the reason we got into allthis mess, we can connect the dots to see God’s promise of the wayout. The reason we struggle in relationships, marriage, and sex isbecause we are sinners. Therefore, the antidote for our sin must bethe antidote for our struggles.Relationships, sex, and intimacy are God’s ideas, and even thoughour selfish rebellion fractured God’s good design, God reconciledeverything back to himself through the life, death, and resurrectionof his Son, Jesus Christ. This includes sex and relationships! Ourgracious God has not left us in the dark.Right there in the middle of the Bible, he inspired five bookswe have traditionally called “the Wisdom Books”—Job, Psalms,Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. These books of divinewisdom reveal to us in song and poetry and dialogue the Lord’s beautiful ways of living and dying and everything in between. And in thatfifth Wisdom Book, the Song of Songs (or the Song of Solomon), wewatch a couple navigate the age-old pursuit of romance—the pursuit, actually, of one another—as they fight for purity against theirflesh, embrace the gracious covenant of marriage, celebrate the amazing gift of sex, and learn how to gracefully grow old together. All theMingling of Souls-INT.indd 1711/13/14 10:54 AM

18/T HE M I N G L I N G OF S OULSwhile they disagree honorably, encourage constantly, and keep thefires of a godly romance burning.The bride and her groom do all of this in a way that gives Godglory and brings themselves great joy and deep intimacy. We woulddo well to watch and imitate them. Now, I don’t think the Song is aChristian guide to dating. I don’t really think there is such a thing.Charles Spurgeon, the “Prince of Preachers,” did say this about theSong of Songs:This Book stands like the tree of life in the midst ofthe garden, and no man shall ever be able to pluckits fruit, and eat thereof, until first he has beenbrought by Christ past the sword of the cherubim,and led to rejoice in the love which hath deliveredhim from death. The Song of Solomon is only tobe comprehended by the men whose standing iswithin the veil. The outer-court worshippers, andeven those who only enter the court of the priests,think the Book a very strange one; but they whocome very near to Christ can often see in this Songof Solomon the only expression which their love totheir Lord desires.8Spurgeon was saying that only those aware of the steadfast loveof God found in Christ could fully understand the type of ferociouslycommitted love we see in the Song. So, again, although this is noChristian dating guide, it is clear from the book that there is a wiseway to approach the opposite sex and that there is a foolish way. WhatMingling of Souls-INT.indd 1811/13/14 10:54 AM

I N TR O D U C TI O N/19we see in the Song is saturated with wisdom, and the believer in Christwill be reminded of the nurturing, patient, steadfast love of our Savior.A quick confession: I have been with my wife, Lauren, for seventeen years. We dated for a year, courted for six months, were engagedfor another six months, and have been married for fifteen years.Unfortunately, Lauren and I didn’t follow quite a bit of what we’reabout to walk through in this book. You might think this makes mea hypocrite, that what I wrote isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.But I would argue that this hard-learned reality actually makes memore confident in what I am writing. We have personally experiencedsome of the heartbreak, confusion, and frustration that result fromgoing with the flow of modern relational dynamics.I am aware of the multiple ways I failed to lead us as a couple. ButI’m also aware—vividly so—of how God’s merciful gospel redeemedmany of the foolish decisions we’ve made and brought incrediblehealing to our hearts. But I pray that you will not presume upon theLord and do whatever you want because you believe he will “fix it all”by his grace in the future. Grace does not make sin safe.Grace does make sinners safe. The grace of God in Jesus Christ,the sinless bridegroom who laid down his life for the church in orderto present her as blameless to the Father in great glory, so secures thechildren of God who make up this bride that they need not fear, asLuther said, “sinning boldly.” Luther wasn’t encouraging us to walkin ways that are contrary to the commands of God. Rather, he wasreminding us that regardless of whatever perversions we are guilty of,God’s grace covers that perversion, and we are encouraged to run tohim and not from him. We can come just as we are to Jesus Christ;he does not love some future version of us, but he loves the real us,Mingling of Souls-INT.indd 1911/13/14 10:54 AM

20/T HE M I N G L I N G OF S OULSthe wounded us, the messy us, the broken us. And what we learn inthe Song of Songs is that a marriage shaped according to this gospelof grace, forged over years of hard-earned trust and forgiveness, canbe an unsafe place for sin but a very safe place for sinners.In a gospel-centered marriage, when two souls are mingledtogether with the Holy Spirit’s leading, we find confirmation afterconfirmation that grace is true, that grace is real—that we can bereally, truly, deeply known and at the same time really, truly, deeplyloved.Mingling of Souls-INT.indd 2011/13/14 10:54 AM

CHAPTER ONEATTR AC TIONIf you watch little boys and girls from birth to around age two, theyare rarely aware of each other’s differences. But gradually they beginto notice their unique distinctions, and by preschool or kindergarten, they are keenly aware that they are different. Around thistime, children tend to split off and hang out with their own sex.They will occasionally shove one another or argue, but for most, thepreference is to run with their own kind.Most boys like to wrestle and climb, and they like to buildand then destroy whatever it is they built. This behavior is ofcourse unacceptable to the majority of little girls who play morerelationally. I have two daughters, and both of them when theywere this age would make any two objects friends. A pencil and aspoon would have conversation and laugh together. The friendshipbetween the pencil and the spoon wouldn’t last long in the worldof boys where destruction is always imminent. Mr. Pencil’s leaden21Mingling of Souls-INT.indd 2111/13/14 10:54 AM

22/T HE M I N G L I N G OF S OULSguts would be spilling out, and Mr. Spoon would be laughing hissilver face off.As boys and girls get a bit older, they begin to mingle a littlemore but still stay predominantly with their own kind. The first bitof flirtation will be disguised as dislike. When boys playfully beginpicking on girls (and vice versa), it is usually a kind of first “Hey,something is changing here” moment. The teasing and pranking arebasically fourth-grade-ese for “I have weird feelings for you but don’tknow what to do with them.”And then it happens: Somewhere between fifth and ninthgrades, depending on a variety of factors affecting development andawareness, what I like to call the “Day of Epiphany” occurs. Up untilthis moment, a child has been largely indifferent to the opposite sexor even thought they were “gross.” But on the Day of Epiphany,something changes.Do you remember that day? You woke up that morning forschool, got dressed, put on your shoes, slung your backpack overyour shoulder, saw your friends, and then as you were walkingtoward your crew, you saw him or her, and all of a sudden he or shewasn’t gross anymore. The indifference and repulsion have vanished.A particular member of the opposite sex caught your eye in a suddenly different way, and, well you kind of wanted one. This is theDay of Epiphany.I served in youth ministry for a decade, and I witnessed firsthandthe marked change between most sixth graders and ninth graders.For instance, if you gather together one hundred sixth graders forthree days, by the end of that third day, the environment will smelllike body odor and cheap cologne. But by the time they hit ninthMingling of Souls-INT.indd 2211/13/14 10:54 AM

ATTRAC TIO N/23grade, the boys are taking showers and styling their hair. All of asudden they care about the kind of clothes they’re wearing, how theylook, and how they smell. What happened to those funky-smellingsixth-grade boys? The Day of Epiphany.What seemed to matter very little before now matters immensely.Boys in ninth grade now care very much what ninth-grade girls thinkabout them. Boys go from wanting to appear repulsive to wanting toappear impressive, especially to girls. The Day of Epiphany changeseverything. After the Day of Epiphany, boys begin to pursue andgirls begin to want to be pursued.There are certainly exceptions to everything I’ve outlined above,but by and large, this smelling and teasing, wooing and pursuing is thetypical trajectory through the onset of puberty for boys and girls. Andthe important thing to remember is this: it is all by God’s good design.ATTRACTIONAttraction is a strange, ambiguous force. The Psychology Dictionarydefines attraction as “the natural feeling of being drawn to otherindividuals and desiring their company. This is usually (but notnecessarily) due to having a personal liking for them.”1 That’s a littlevague, but then again, so is attraction. We feel ourselves drawn topeople, whether romantically or not, because they have “a certainsomething.” It’s usually not just one thing, but a variety of characteristics or impressions, that attracts us to one another. There arelots of beautiful people in the world, of course, but most of us feeldrawn romantically to members of the opposite sex we find physically attractive plus something else.Mingling of Souls-INT.indd 2311/13/14 10:54 AM

24/T HE M I N G L I N G OF S OULSAnd yet, when it comes to romance, there is something physical that typically draws us to someone else. When we say we findsomeone “attractive” today, this is basically what we mean: we findthat person physically appealing. He or she is good-looking. Forboth men and women, but especially for men, our initial attractionmay have little to do with the person’s character or competencybut rather emerges simply from liking the way he or she looks.This is only logical, because physical appearance is the first thingwe notice, and it takes a while longer to get to know someone’scharacter. For the moment, we look across a room and see someonewho is physically appealing.It ought to go without saying, but it doesn’t, so I’ll say it: Thereis nothing wrong with this process of being physically attractedto someone. It’s completely natural. In fact, the Song of Songsbegins this way: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! Foryour love is better than wine” (1:2). The woman in the Song sawSolomon, and she liked what she saw. She wanted him to kiss her,and just looking at him made her glad. He was what we might call“eye candy.”Over and over, in fact, the Bible doesn’t just describe physicalattraction between the sexes; it sanctions it. From Adam’s loveat-first-sight song about Eve in Genesis 2 to Jacob’s immediateattraction to Rachel in Genesis 29, where verse 17 tells us she was“beautiful in form and appearance,” we do not see the Scripturesopposed to physical attraction. Certainly, the Bible’s wisdom onGod’s design for romance is more than physical attraction, butit’s not less than that. Nor is it even something we are advisedto outgrow. Even as your love for your spouse deepens and takesMingling of Souls-INT.indd 2411/13/14 10:54 AM

ATTRAC TIO N/25on the character of more thorough knowledge of your spouse’sweaknesses, wounds, and sins, the instruction to pursue physicalattraction throughout the years remains. Thus, the father advisedhis young son in Proverbs 5:19 about his wife: “Let her breasts fillyou at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.”Note the word “always.”Nearly all of us will always be physically attracted to whatwe consider beautiful. Our tastes and interests might vary, butthe instinct itself is fairly common across the billions of humanbeings in the world: we are attracted to those we find possessingof beauty. Beauty is that particular combination of qualities thatespecially pleases the sight. It is, as the saying goes, “in the eyeof the beholder.” Men find beautiful a woman’s particular shape(curvy or thin, according to taste) or style of hair or dress, andwomen may find beautiful a man’s particular eye color (blue orbrown) or physique (toned or burly). We naturally notice thesequalities across a room, and even if just mentally, we are drawn tothe people we find “beautiful.”The fact that we all tend to have different tastes when it comesto physical attraction proves how creative and versatile our Creator’sartistry truly is. And the fact that we all tend to find somebodyphysically attractive proves how brilliantly our Creator has embedded in us the very appreciation of beauty (which is to say, moredeeply, the appreciation of glory, of which his own is the pinnacle).The natural and biblical reality is that most human beings are goingto be physically attracted to the opposite sex. This is a good andright thing. But according to the same Word of God that sanctionsphysical attraction, we must be very careful with it.Mingling of Souls-INT.indd 2511/13/14 10:54 AM

26/T HE M I N G L I N G OF S OULSBEAUTY IS VAINAs I’ve noted, the Bible has much to say about physical beauty. But weshould expect that God’s Word on beauty is not as one-dimensionalas our own. Although the very reality of beauty presupposes thenature of attraction, we also see that beauty, according to the wisdomof God, can be deceptive.For example, in the book of Proverbs, there are warnings given tothe male reader about being unduly captivated by a woman’s beauty.In Proverbs 6:25, we read the caution, “Do not desire her beauty inyour heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes.” Is theLord speaking out of both sides of his mouth? Are we supposed to beattracted to a woman physically but at the same time not?In a way, yes. The key phrase related to desire in Proverbs 6:25is “in your heart,” with the added helpful context of the word “capture.” This is not the same as being “captivated,” which can be a goodthing. What the Bible repeatedly challenges us toward is gettingbeyond mere external appearances and wisely considering beauty ofthe heart.Another well-known biblical warning is found in Proverbs31:30: “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman whofears the LORD is to be praised.” For beauty to be vain means it canbe superficial—preoccupied solely with the external. For beaut

151,000 books on marriage; 27,000 books on dating; almost 12,000 books on attraction; and more than 190,000 books on sex. On the page listing books on the subject of marriage, the "sponsored links" suggested pages on topics such as "aggressive divorce" and "divorce help for women," among others. Clearly, we are a culture simultane-